Faint Fuzzies: Tales of Comet Tails

Turns out, finding fuzzballs isn’t easy. If you’re like us, you’ve been spending many a morning hunting for two faint periodic comets: 45P/Honda-Markov-Padušáková and 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresàk. Yes, they’re both making close passes in 2017 as many a website have exclaimed, but they’re also both tiny and faint binocular objects from dark sky sites at the very best. Still, everyone from our repair guy to our landlord to random folks on social media have asked us how to see these intrinsically faint comets.

Obviously, even these minor celestial events pack a hefty modern social media punch in the general public’s eye. I go back and forth on this topic. On the one hand, I’m glad in this day and age of fake news ‘end of the world of the week’ killer space rocks that folks are still interested in real space news. There’s a true hunger out there. But us comet hunters know how faint these objects really are, and we fear the inevitable cries of “that’s it?” or worse yet “I don’t see anything!” and the eyepiece.

Follow comets like we do, and you realize that for every naked eye visitor, there are maybe ten binocular comets or so that come and go… and for every 10 binocular comets, another 10 don’t even make the +10th magnitude or brighter cut. That means that comets brighter than +6th magnitude are only 1-in-a-100, and we’d wager truly ‘great comets of the century’ are in the 1-in-a-thousand plus class.

Comets are fragile creatures. They often fail to live up to predictions, and under-perform or disintegrate (remember ISON back in 2013?) altogether. The least little bit of sky haze or light pollution with make them vanish from view, and all of that quoted brightness is smeared out over a large surface area like a nebula or cluster.

Flashback to 1996, and bright comets actually seemed common for a very few months, as Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp graced northern skies. In those halcyon days, an amateur astronomer’s job was easy, as I could simply take friends outdoors, look up, and say “there it is,” and wait for the “ohs” and “ahs” to follow. Both comets also gave us a good lesson in orbital geometry, as Hale-Bopp was a large bright comet nearly on the other side of Earth’s orbit, while Hyakutake was a smaller comet, close up. Now, if only Hale-Bopp had come by six months or so earlier…

But you can’t custom order celestial spectacles such as great comets from the Universe. Go back a bit further, and it seems like the skies were littered with bright comets in the 17th and 19th century… though we don’t really see banners adorned with Latin inscriptions trailing comets as depicted on medieval tapestries, and popes rarely excommunicate comets anymore.

And modern all-sky surveys such as PanSTARRS have upped the comet hunting game, making it much less likely that the next comet will have an umlaut in its name, to the consternation of science writers hunting for “ä” under the insert menu… when we find our first comet, we’ll insist it be spelled “Comet Đîckîňsðň…”

There’s only one solution to this comet craziness: hubris. The Universe owes us a Great Comet. Period. Dot.

Astro Documentaries

Pictured is a Delta IV rocket launch from Cape Canaveral on November 21st, 2010. The image is a 20 second exposure taken at dusk, shot from about 100 miles west of the launch site. The launch placed a classified payload in orbit for the United States Air Force.

DIY Astronomy

Difficult but not impossible to catch against the dawn or dusk sky, spotting an extreme crescent moon can be a challenge. The slender crescent pictured was shot 30 minutes before sunrise when the Moon was less than 20 hours away from New. A true feat of visual athletics to catch, a good pair of binoculars or a well aimed wide field telescopic view can help with the hunt.

The Sun is our nearest star, and goes through an 11-year cycle of activity. This image was taken via a properly filtered telescope, and shows the Sun as it appeared during its last maximum peak in 2003. This was during solar cycle #23, a period during which the Sun hurled several large flares Earthward. The next solar cycle is due to peak around 2013-14.

Astronomy Gear Reviews

Located in the belt of the constellation Orion, Messier 42, also known as the Orion Nebula is one of the finest deep sky objects in the northern hemisphere sky. Just visible as a faint smudge to the naked eye on a clear dark night, the Orion Nebula is a sure star party favorite, as it shows tendrils of gas contrasted with bright stars. M42 is a large stellar nursery, a star forming region about 1,000 light years distant.

Astronomical Observing Targets

Orbiting the planet in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) every 90 minutes, many people fail to realize that you can see the International Space Station (ISS) from most of the planet on a near-weekly basis. In fact, the ISS has been known to make up to four visible passes over the same location in one night. The image pictured is from the Fourth of July, 2011 and is a 20 second exposure of a bright ISS pass.

Next to the Sun, the two brightest objects in the sky are the Moon and the planet Venus. In fact, when Venus is favorably placed next to the Moon, it might just be possible to spot the two in the daytime. Another intriguing effect known as earthshine or ashen light is also seen in the image on the night side of the Moon; this is caused by sunlight reflected back off of the Earth towards our only satellite.

A mosaic of three images taken during the total lunar eclipse of December 21st, 2010. The eclipse occurred the same day as the winter solstice. The curve and size of the Earth’s shadow is apparent in the image.